In southern Illinois, where several counties have zero news outlets, journalists Molly Parker and Julia Rendleman are working to promote local news. As assistant professors of journalism at SIU, they’ve helped bridge the gap with the Saluki Local Reporting Lab, a program that connects students with resources needed to publish works in statewide organizations. The two organized their newest initiative last week: a community forum discussing the importance of local news.
The Thursday, April 24, event, Local News! Why it’s important to Southern Illinois, featured a panel discussion and forum about how nonprofit newsrooms and universities are rebuilding news coverage in Illinois.
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“We just wanted to bring people together to talk about the importance of local news,” Parker said. “We all know the problems and we don’t want to dwell on them – that we’ve lost a lot of reporters and have a lot of news deserts, although also a lot of people still really working hard, I think, to cover the news in our region – but we know we could do more and that we can do more together, so I think we just wanted to bring people together to talk about how partnerships can help do more, basically.”
The panel, held at the Varsity in Carbondale and moderated by John Shaw, the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, featured editors from ProPublica, Illinois Answers Project, Northwestern Medill and Capitol News Illinois. Among the panelists was the Daily Egyptian’s editor-in-chief Lylee Gibbs.
“The Daily Egyptian has really stepped up to, I think, fill the news void,” Gibbs said. “I mean, a lot of people are coming to us for the news, and if we’re not the first person to tell it, I think we’re doing it quite in-depth in comparison.”
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According to the 2024 Medill State of Local News report, Illinois has lost 86% of its journalists and 36% of its newspapers since 2005. Forty counties currently have just one news source, and five counties across southern and southeast Illinois are considered “news deserts,” meaning they have no locally-based news source.
“We are discussing how nonprofit newsrooms are partnering with traditional legacy newsrooms, whether they’re nonprofit or for profit, things like The Southern Illinoisan and news stations around here,” Parker said. “These nonprofit organizations want to be good partners. Nobody’s trying to replace what exists. We don’t have enough. So like the Daily Egyptian, even some of the sort of upstart blogs, we should be training them to do better. We’re not trying to take over. Nobody’s trying to take over. I think everybody’s just trying to look for solutions where we can take what few resources remain and be stronger together.”
At ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization based in New York City, Sarah Blustain leads the Local Reporting Network, which partners local journalists across the country with the newsroom to produce investigative works. She’s held the position since 2021, and has worked with Parker on Illinois-based projects. She traveled from New Jersey to participate on the panel.
“Newspapers are disappearing at a very rapid clip,” Blustain said. “I feel like there are now national outlets, but they all sort of cover the same stories, you know, the immigration story, the tariff story, whatever, and it makes what is happening locally more invisible, but that doesn’t mean that what’s happening locally is less bad for people. You still need to investigate locally and tell people what’s happening in their own backyard.”
Illinois Sen. Terri Bryant was in attendance at the event, and she said she had been hoping for that discussion point to come up. As a legislator, she believes that the most successful newspapers are the ones that cover hometown topics.
“One paper that I take at home is the County Journal out of Percy,” Bryant said. “It’s just a hometown newspaper. It’s not super expensive to buy the subscription to, and I don’t even get it until two weeks later because it gets mailed to me; I don’t care. It’s not just because I’m a legislator, but because I know a lot of the people that are in that paper.
“It’s exciting to me to see that somebody maybe that I went to school with has become a grandparent, or I remember a few years ago there was a young man from Steelville who, at 10 years old, made a triple play. That’s exciting to see that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of the larger newspapers, including The Southern Illinoisan, got to a place where they were buying news from national level, from the state level, they forgot all about the hometown folks.”
Bryant said she and her staff have an initiative called “Saw You In The News.” She said they have subscriptions to 12 print newspapers, and when they see an article featuring her constituents, they laminate it and send it to them with a handwritten note.
“My staff cuts them all out, but I read every one of those articles before we send them off so that I can know what’s going on in the district,” she said. “It makes me a better legislator.”
Sonya Dymova, a third-year journalism student at Northwestern University, said she became interested in local news after seeing statistics on how a lack of local outlets can be linked to higher rates of government corruption.
“I was stunned when I saw that,” Dymova said. “Like, if local journalists are not going to come to the (government) hearings, are not going to sit there — even if there is no story, just by showing that we are here and we are watching you, I honestly believe that that’s such a deterrent against corruption and without it, things would be way, way worse.”
Dymova made the trip from Chicago to Carbondale with her classmate Simon Carr and professor Bob Rowley, who was also a panelist. At Northwestern, students and faculty track and analyze changes to local journalism throughout the U.S. through The State of Local News Project.
“I think that everyone deserves to be seen, heard, felt, and that we should have papers out there that are able to see and hear real people and talk to them about what’s going on in their lives,” Carr said. “I think that’s a big deal.”
It’s this interest in local journalism that inspired Rendleman and Parker to put the program together.
“We’ve noticed that there’s an appetite for local news,” Rendleman said. “If the Daily Egyptian posts anything online, like there’s automatically a lot of engagement…We just think that we need to bridge the gap for readers and writers and people making the news and consuming the news, and this is a great opportunity to do that.”
Alongside Gibbs of the Daily Egyptian, Blustain of ProPublica and Rowley of Medill, the panel featured Ruby L. Bailey, editor-in-chief of the Illinois Answers Project; Jan Thompson, director of the SIU School of Journalism and Advertising; and Jeff Rogers, executive director of the Illinois Press Foundation. The program was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Advertising, Capitol News Illinois and the Illinois Press Foundation.
Before the panel, Parker said she hoped to have some folks show up to have a lively conversation. With over 80 people in attendance, the theater ended up packed, and many guests stayed to chat at the conclusion of the forum.
“I think it’s important that we let people know we’re here to listen,” Parker said.
Rendleman shared Parker’s sentiment.
“I hope that people see that we’re open and willing and wanting to talk about the issues that are important to them,” she said. “If they have a story and they feel frustrated, like why isn’t anyone covering it, this is a great time to approach us or reach out. Just like Molly said, stronger together. We’re a small community and we need to work together. News is really important and especially actual, factual news that is verified, fact-checked, real interviews with people who are living and not created by AI robots. That’s what we are, and we want to stake that claim in our community, and we want people to feel invested.”
News editor Carly Gist can be reached at [email protected]. To stay up to date on all your southern Illinois news, be sure to follow The Daily Egyptian on Facebook and on X @dailyegyptian.
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